65: Are You Breathing Wrong? – The Shocking Truth About Breathwork, Health & Healing with Sachin Patel

You breathe about 30 pounds of air every single day. You take 23,000 breaths. So for most people, that's more than the number of steps that they take. And you know, the thing that we do the most consciously and perhaps unconsciously is think the thing that we do second most is breathe. The thing with breathing that's also interesting is that because of the impact, you know, if we look at where our diaphragm is right underneath our lungs, our diaphragm sits nicely over top of our liver. So if I was an intelligent designer and creator, then that's exactly where I'd put the diaphragm and exactly where I put the liver, where it's going to get 23,000 mini hugs with each and every single breath that I take. Some of the biggest lymph nodes in our body are also right underneath the diaphragm. So that pumping action when we take nice smooth breaths each day, 23,000 of them, that's also going to help move the toxicity and especially that lymph, which is where that toxic sludge accumulates as a part of cellular waste products foreign.

Welcome back once again everybody. I'm super excited to be here with a friend and colleague, Sachin Patel. He really was brilliant guy and we're gonna be talking about breath work, the power of breath work. He does a lot of things as a mini hats and one of the things he actually is an expert at is in breath work and how it actually changes your body. So I want to start with that, give his bio and just hop into it. I routinely recommend breath work and actually a video that he has been generous to basically put out there to the world for free. I routinely use with patients to help them kind of break trauma cycles. And so I want to talk a little bit about that today and power of it because I think it's one of these basic tools that people forget how powerful it is. And so hopefully at the end of this time you'll kind of realize you're, you can do a lot with breathing and breath work to regulate your nervous system, which ultimately affects your, your entire body. So after a brief introduction, we'll kind of hop into it. So Sachin Patel is a father who husband, philanthropist, functional medicine practice success, coach, speaker, author, breathwork facilitator and plant medicine advocate. Satchin's convinced that the doctor of the future is the patient. And he's committed himself to helping others raise their consciousness, activate their inner doctor, and initiate their deepest healing through the use of lifestyle and breath work. Satchin founded the Living Proof Institute, through which he pioneered a revolutionary approach to patient centered healthcare. Sachin coaches hundreds of practitioners around the world so that they are empowered to deliver affordable and inspired care to their communities through his Perfect Practice mentorship program. He's an advocate of transforming the healthcare paradigm and he has devoted his life to the betterment of healthcare for both patients and practitioners. So, Sachin, welcome. You're giving us your time to have this conversation about something near and dear to both of our hearts, which is actually healing through breathwork.

Thank you, Dr. Aaron. Such an honor, such a pleasure and so grateful for our friendship and this opportunity to share with your listeners and community.

So what kind of got me down this pathway? Actually, I do with my wife and those who've watched our podcasts and things already kind of know part of her story. But our son got crushed in the elevator when he was 8 and he should have died, but he didn't. And so she was actually driving back from Kentucky when this happened and had about 8 hours, 12 hours to kind of think and ruminate about basically how much malformed and how much brain damage her son was going to have. She came back, it was a big trauma to her. And so for months and later he would disappear, go hide. At that age, 8 year old boys kind of hide in closets and places and fall asleep and she would have a trauma cycle. She'd panic, he'd pop back up an hour later, hey, Mom. And she, it would take her hours. Sometimes she would calm down till late in the night. Obviously a trauma response. And so at one of our meetings, she actually did a breathwork session with Sachin and it was profound. It just absolutely broke that cycle. Yes, she still got anxious when he disappeared, but he popped back up and she would go back into normal, just, okay, there he is. Go back to myself. And so that was like the first aha moment for me. This stuff actually works. So Satya, I want you to talk about, you have your, your feet and your hands and a lot of different things. I want to just go back to the past a little bit, to ancient traditions, ancient healing traditions. Because the idea of breath energy, like it's, even though there's new books about like, like the word breath, I think James Nestor wrote that book. This is actually quite old. Could you like just educate us about the history of this? Because that's what really fascinates me is these new high tech, you know, cutting edge biohack things are actually really, really old.

Yeah. You know, thank you for sharing your story. I had no idea And I'm, you know, I'm even more grateful that, you know, this has helped her and appreciate the opportunity to impact her life and hopefully many others. You know, breathwork has been around since the dawn of humanity, right? We've been breathing since the moment we became humans. And you know, whether you believe in evolution or creation doesn't really matter. We've been breathing from the, you know, very beginning. And it's about, it's dated back to about 5,000 years, I would imagine. It goes back even further where seers and sages and yogis, practitioners have been using breath work as a tool to not just improve their, you know, physiology in ways that they probably couldn't even measure the way we can today, but to really improve their self awareness and to open the biggest door that we ever swing in our lives, which is a door that opens inwards. So, you know, there's tons and tons of case studies and stories. Monks using breath work to warm their bodies, to heat their bodies, to take, you know, cold wet sheets and dry them in the middle of winter by using their breath. And you know, breath is in Ayurveda the word or in, in Sanskrit the word is prana. Prana is the life force in Chinese medicine or in the Chinese language it's qi or qi. And so we've, you know, it's been used in so many different cultures for many, many thousands of years. And now I feel that we have a, the need to, to bring breath work back to kind of the top of modality tool set that we have and we also have the science to prove it. And I think that as a world has become more and more complicated and as you and I know, like healthcare can get very complicated very quickly, I believe it's one of those simple things that people can do to bring their body back to baseline and it's something that they take with them everywhere they go. So it's a beautiful intervention. Not just breath work itself, but you know, just teaching people how to breathe correctly has a huge impact on their health. And I'm sure we'll get into that as we get into this conversation today. And even James Nestor in his book Breath, he talks about it, that this is a lost art and he's trying to raise awareness around the breath and just helping people understand how our breath shapes our face, how it shapes our immune system, how it shapes our lymphatic system, how, how it shapes our physiology and hormones, how it shapes our nervous system. It plays such a huge role and it's one of those Lead dominoes that again, for thousands of years, people have had the awareness of, but perhaps not the tools to measure like we do today, the important impact it can have on our health.

I've heard stories, you know, these are years. I mean, breath work is one of those things that 10 years ago I kind of poo pooed, like, yeah, whatever, breathe.

Me too.

We all do it. We all do it. Like, so what, you know, and you hear these stories, like, oh, yeah, there's these monks that, like, you know, under these waterfalls that are like 32 degrees cold and they're there for hours. I'm like, yeah, whatever. They're not there for hours. And they're actually through breathwork, heating their body up. And then all. The iceman, Wim Hof. Yeah, Wim Hof, kind of like brought that to, I guess, Western consciousness. But him, you're doing his breath work where people literally will sit in snow and the snow melts around them. It's one of those things like, wow, maybe you can change your physiology to a significant degree with breath work. This is kind of interesting and that's kind of got me into thinking other things about it. But how does it work? Like, I know I want to go first talk about ancient thinking and then modern thinking, but from your understanding, which is this is more your expertise than mine. Like, how did the ancients think breath worked? Like, was it a life force, was it energy? Like, how did they conceptualize the concept and then through controlling it, what was the point? Was the outcome of that?

Yeah, you know, one of the things that breath does is it turns off our default mode network. So when we go into, you know, certain types of breathing patterns, we're able to shut off the part of our brain that is constantly inconsistently ruminating and particularly repeating patterns over and over and over again. And then, you know, so it helps there from a mindset and, you know, trauma perspective and also from a personal development perspective as well. Many people who are watching this are probably trying to write a new story, particularly when it comes to their health. And if we can write a new story, it's so much easier to start with a blank page instead of writing over the old stories. So one is that it turns off our default mode network. Now, they probably didn't know that. They probably didn't name it that way. But what I do think that they knew was that the breath is something that we can't live very long without. You know, you can live a long time without food, several weeks, you can go a few days, probably up to a week without water, few days without sleep, but you can't stop breathing for more than a few minutes. And so they identified it as the life force, the very thing that keeps us alive. And as you probably know even better than I do, the mitochondria can only live a few seconds without any oxygen. So it is literally our life force to keep us alive and keep us functioning. Now, the breath is interesting too, because it also has a mechanical impact on the body. Every time we breathe in and out, our diaphragm moves up and down several inches. And this piston, like pumping action is what mobilizes lymph in our trunk organs. It sends energy into those organ systems. It also, with the expansion and contraction of our lungs and the up and down movement of our diaphragm, also assists the heart in moving blood, so it assists in circulation. And if we take it a step further, it also assists us in regulating our nervous system and it changes the shape of our facial structure. So the way we breathe, if we breathe through our mouth consistently as children and adults, it changes the shape of our sinuses. It also shapes and impacts our immune system directly. So I don't know what they were thinking, I don't know what thoughts were going through their head. But I do know that what we know now is that it is one of the simplest things that we can do to radically improve our health in so, so many dimensions. So I look at health as like the lead domino when it comes to a person's metabolic function, because the way they're breathing will have an impact in several different systems in their body. And, you know, the cool thing about breathing is that it's one of the most immediate things that we can do to change how we feel and how we function in a measurable way. So it doesn't take long for us to make a difference. And one thing you said is that breath can help us and regulate us, but one of the other things that our breath can do is it can regulate others around us as well. So it doesn't just impact us, it can impact people that we love and care about, Especially when we have young children. The way we breathe can actually create a space of an environment of safety for them. And. And so it's also important for us to recognize the impact the way we breathe can have on others as well.

Yeah, this is an interesting anecdote. When I got Covid, I got horrible anxiety from it. And I'd never had. I mean, you hear people talk about anxiety and you give people anxiety medications and all that kind of stuff. But it's actually like my children's voices, patients asking me the same question like two times in a row, my dog running through the house, all of those things, like just those, like nails on a chalkboard for me. And I was like, this is anxiety. This is horrible. And unfortunately, I knew enough. And so I started doing breath work. 20 minutes, twice a day, Wait, when I woke up, went to bed, started doing some other things as well. But it took about six weeks. But, you know, the first week I was just like, it was so hard to do it for 20 minutes because my mind was all over the place. But after a couple weeks, I would just get in the zone so quickly I would lose track of time. You know, I was probably getting in the flow state. And within six weeks, the anxiety was broken. And one of the things that with patients I've seen is so many people who didn't do that with. With COVID a year, year half, six months out, had created new connections, part of this default mode network of anxiety. And it's interesting how powerful breath work was for me personally. I started using with patients, and it's interesting. We have patients with dysautonomia in pots, which is this problem with your nervous system. And now the local university is using breath with a particular device called LEAF to actually treat these patients, dysautonomia. And so, you know, I think like, this is really cutting edge science in many, many ways. People we just now being able to wrap our brain around, around it. The last thing I wanted to say is it was. I was reading some interesting articles a couple years ago looking at measuring volatile, volatile organic compounds in people's breath, which are chemicals our body gives off. And they're actually using this in hospital situations to figure out what someone's risk for dying was. And the higher the VOCs in someone's breath, the more likely they were to go from the floor to the icu. And if they're in the icu, the more likely they were to die. And it's just one of those things, toxins, we breathe out toxins. How does this impact us with that? And I wonder if you could talk about that briefly, Because I know I've heard some practitioners talk about this concept, which now I have data for, about the idea that when you get a better breath, deeper breath, you're actually helping discharge toxins. You know, emotional, spiritual, energetic, whatever. Could you talk to that a little bit? Because yes, we are giving out toxins, but what does that actually kind of mean or could you give us some insight on that.

Yeah, I'll do my best. So. And these are great questions, by the way. So one of the things I learned is that about 70% of our detoxification takes place through the lungs. And this kind of makes sense because you breathe about 30 pounds of air every single day. You take 23,000 breaths. So for most people, that's more than the number of steps that they take. And, you know, the thing that we do the most consciously and perhaps unconsciously is think. The thing that we do second most is breathe. The thing with breathing that's also interesting is that because of the impact, you know, if we look at where our diaphragm is right underneath our lungs, our diaphragm sits nicely over top of our liver. So if I was an intelligent designer and creator, then that's exactly where I'd put the diaphragm and exactly where I put the liver, where it's going to get 23,000 mini hugs with each and every single breath that I take. Some of the biggest lymph nodes in our body are also right underneath the diaphragm. So that pumping action when we take nice smooth breaths each day, 23,000 of them, that's also gonna help move the toxicity and especially that lymph, which is where that toxic sludge accumulates as a part of cellular waste products. So we've kind of been designed in a very specific way to use the breath as a tool to help us move toxicity. And then, of course, as the diaphragm moves up and down, it's also gonna help improve motility in the digestive system as well. You know, one of the most common symptoms, digestive symptoms of people who have chronic stress is constipation. And it kind of makes sense when you think of it from a physical standpoint. One is because somebody who has chronic stress is going to be a short, shallow breather. They're usually going to. Which means that their diaphragm isn't going to move up and down as much with each breath that they take. So not only is their nervous system more sympathetic dominant, but. But they're also going to be not mechanically moving, you know, the materials through their digestive system. So by changing the way somebody breathes, you not only change their nervous system to go into more of a rest and digest state, but you also now physically assist the digestive organs in moving stuff, moving, you know, the waste products through the body and out of the body. So there's lots of physical implications of the way we Breathe along with, you know, mental and spiritual emotions as the way we breathe. You know the word inspired, right, Means to take in. And so when we're inspired, we're taking in, you know, this life force and we're utilizing it as a force for good, so to speak. One other thing that's also interesting about breathing is that many things that we do on a day to day basis, we don't necessarily think of as breathing or breath work. We don't necessarily associate them with breath work. But crying is a form of breath work. You know, when a child is crying and, you know, it's unfortunate, but I was guilty of this at one point. But, you know, when my son was crying, I just want him to stop crying. Not because I wanted him to stop crying, because I wanted to be out of pain, but the only way to stop crying is to stop breathing. And so when you tell a child to stop crying or you, you know, try to get them to stop crying, the only way for them to do that is to stop moving their diaphragm. So the diaphragm is trying to release the, these emotions and regulate the nervous system. And you're trying to get it to stop. So it's like running into a brick wall, so to speak. And so then the diaphragm starts getting trigger points, it starts getting, you know, tightened up. And as a result of that, somebody's breathing pattern becomes short and shallow. So to go back to what you were saying about COVID you know, Covid for many people, affected the respiratory system, which affected their ability to breathe properly, you know, with the right depth, for example, and they probably became shorter, shallow breathers, which would, the natural byproduct of that would be anxiety. So the way we breathe changes the way we feel, and the way we feel changes the way we breathe. So it's kind of a two way street. So you did the right thing. Maybe you knew this and, or perhaps it was intuitive. But by changing the way you breathe and being able to take more, you know, deepen your breath and to breathe more correctly, you were able to then use your breath to regulate your nervous system. But people who did not do corrective breathing, who remained short, shallow breathers, I would expect them to have anxiety because the way we breathe creates a predictable response in our body. And that's why our nervous system uses the breath. It's one of the first thing that changes in somebody. So if you're ever speaking to someone as a clinician or as a spouse, or even your children, we. One of the Things that you want to pay attention to is how their breath changes. So between the stimulus and the response, you know, Viktor Frankl says there's a space, and in that space, I would add, is the breath. So if you're speaking to someone and their breathing pattern changes, you know that the state of their nervous system changed. So other examples of breathing signatures, aside from crying would be laughing, right? When somebody says something funny, we laugh, right? And our diaphragm wiggles and it moves up and down, and that creates a physiological response and a chemical response balance. In our body, there's something called laughing yoga, where you're put in a room or you're surrounded by a group of people, and you just literally are told to start laughing. You don't even know why or what you're laughing at. But within a few minutes, you're laughing uncontrollably and you have all the joy of laughter, as if somebody told a funny joke or you're meeting up with some friends and having some good laughs because the chemistry in your body changed. Other breathing signatures are sighing. So when you feel a sense of relief, you sigh. Gasping is a breathing signature, right? So when we gasp, we expand our lungs rapidly squeezing our heart, instantly increasing our blood pressure so we can get blood to our arms and legs and run away from whatever is chasing us. Screaming is a form of breath work, right? So there's all these things that we do that we don't even necessarily realize, that our forms of breath work, that our nervous system is utilizing as a way to regulate our body or change our physical, physical, and emotional state.

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Yeah, actually right now, in kind of in my world, functional medicine world, as well as the psychiatric world, psychedelics have become a really big kind of hot button topic. And they have a lot of data going back to the 60s and 70s with Timothy O' Leary up at Harvard, I believe is where he was at with a lot of the research he did with psilocybin. But and how they work through these default mode networks, how they actually in trauma almost, it's almost like, it's like the disassociation. Your body and mind separate, they come back together and you come back together at a different state, which actually can break trauma, break people with significant mental health issues. And one of the first things that kind of triggered me that breath work might be powerful. I was actually watching holotrophic breathwork where people do it for two or three hours and they were having these psychedelic like responses, uncontrollable laughing, muscle contraction, like body contortion, probably from, you know, hypo low CO2 levels, probably from blowing all the CO2, you know. But it's one of those things. Like this is actually pharmacologically a very powerful thing to one extreme and then the other extreme of reading some literature recently about the average American, how like how shallow our breath work is and how we. We actually do blow off a little CO2 naturally. So we tend to have a lower, little lower CO2 levels which actually ramp up our sympathetic nervous system, I. E. A little bit of anxiety. So all of a sudden the extremes breath work can have powerful, powerful impacts on our physiology. And I think we don't. It's just a simple thing that we overlook. And so I want to transition into different types of breath work. I think people are familiar with box breathing and a lot of these are actually in Nestor's book Breathe, which is a great book. I'm assuming you read it because you're, you're. Yeah, it's a great book. Could you walk us through some of the. Traditionally, some of the more, maybe more potent or more well known or some of the different types of breath work and like the thinking behind them.

Yeah, absolutely. So a couple things I want to mention is, you know, just building the bridge between breathwork and psychedelics. I believe that they can both get you to the same place. That's where holotropic breathing comes in. That's where sometimes the elemental rhythm, which is what Becky and your clients experience, comes in. It can be really, really powerful and very predictable and very effective, I think, of breath Work like taking the stairs to the top of the mountain. And I think of psychedelics like taking the helicopter to the top of the mountain. So one, one's a little bit more work to get there, and the other one can be scary, right? Getting in the helicopter can be a little bit scary, but it'll get you there as well and probably get you there a little bit faster with perhaps less effort. However, the experiences can be very, very comparable. And that's one of the things that got me into breath work is after experiencing psychedelics, I wanted to, you know, using things like psilocybin, myself and 5 Meo, and I just recently came back from an Ayahuasca journey. They're all different in their own potent ways, but I feel like the breath work is the closest thing that I could get to. To having a psychedelic experience without taking psychedelics. And it's quite profound, the experiences that people have and the breakthroughs that they have. The brain is in a much more suggestible state, and we're able to. Because that internal chatter has shut off, we're able to rewrite some of our old stories that are no longer serving us. So it's amazing what can happen in just one session with somebody, and then they're just able to integrate and process the world around them so much more effectively. So to give you some ideas on different breathing techniques that can be really helpful, there's literally a breath for every occasion, so to speak. Right? Just like there's an app on your phone for everything, there's a breath for, you know, a specific situation and how you want to feel. The breath that I come back to most often, and I encourage my clients to focus on, is something called coherence breathing. And in breath, James Nestor talks about this. I always want to give credit where it's due, but I'm, you know, and he'll tell you, like, he's very humble. I've interviewed him a couple times and hung out with him in Costa Rica at his retreat for a week. And he'll tell you that he's a. A conduit of this information. So he's gathered it from all the interviews that he's done and, and people that he's hung, hung around with. And some of this also comes from the HeartMath Institute. So coherence breathing is probably how I would encourage people to breathe most of the time. If you're listening to this conversation and you're driving or doing the dishes or walking the dog, you know, this is the breath I would be using most of the day. Now, if you're working out, you wouldn't want to use this breath necessarily. And it's really simple. It's placing your tongue at the roof of your mouth. And you want, you should be able to lay the majority of your tongue across the roof of your mouth, that's your hard palate without any difficulty. If you can't do that, you may have something called a tongue tie. And a tongue tie is much more common than you might think. A tongue tie limits and restricts the mobility of your tongue. Now, your tongue is fascially connected to every organ, muscle and tissue in your entire body. So when the tongue is tied up, or when it's not moving through its full range of motion, this can result in muscle tightness and stiffness throughout the entire body. So that's one thing to keep in mind. Sometimes people have a hard time placing their tongue at the roof of their mouth and laying it across there. And that could be a first indication that there's something that needs to be anatomically corrected with the tongue. My wife, in fact, had a tongue tie, didn't know it her whole life until we started going down this rabbit hole and realized that she grew up with anxiety, sucked her thumb as a child. She had a hard time latching on when she was young, so breastfeeding was a bit of a challenge for her. And she loved drinking, you know, sugary drinks. So like apple juice was her favorite drink. And she was a habitual mouth breather. So she ended up having low grade anxiety, lots of cavities, despite a very good, you know, oral hygiene practice. And we just didn't have any explanation for it. And she also had chronic tightness in her neck. Turns out when we had an airway dentist evaluate her, she had a tongue tie. And by using a laser, we had it snipped. And it's a 30 second procedure. Tongue is one of the fastest tissues in your body to recover, so it's a pretty quick recovery. And immediately her neck pain went away immediately. She was able to touch her toes, which she had a hard time doing prior to that. And she just felt so much calm. It's just like her whole body just calmed down. And so sometimes attention and tightness and perhaps even some of the anxiety we feel can be because of an anatomical, I don't want to call it a defect, but anomaly in our tongue. More and more people with methylation issues, so we're seeing that come up more and more often is what's causing these tongue tie issues for children. So pay Attention to the way your child is breathing. And if you have a hard time laying your tongue across the top of your mouth, then just something to be mindful of, placing the tongue there. The encouragement is to breathe in for a count of up to 6. So anywhere from 4 to 6 is the sweet spot for people. And breathing out through the nose for a count of six. So we can try that right now. Aaron, if you want to place your tongue at the roof of your mouth and take a deep breath in for the count of six. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And then out. 2, 3, 4, five, six. So keeping that pace. And I shouldn't have said deep breath. You're just breathing comfortably. So it's not taking a full inhalation and exhalation. Just like when you walk, you don't take a full stride and step right. You just take a normal step. So normal breath is about 500 milliliters. It's about a tenth of your lung capacity. So just in and out, breathing gently. Your breath should be inaudible. The person sitting next to you shouldn't know. And if you're breathing this way, no one else should know either. So this is the best way to breathe. It's called coherence. Breathing connects your brain and your heart, which I think we need more of these days. And the other thing that happens when you breathe this way is you get an increase of oxygenation to your brain. So I think we can all use more blood flow to our brain. I think we can all use a more connected heart and brain. And it allows us to be in a state where we're calm, relaxed, we're focused and also creative and centered. Now, the next breathing technique I love to share with people is something called a physiologic sigh. Andrew Huberman and his research team actually did a study on this breath and found it to be more effective than meditation. So if you're somebody that has a hard time quieting your mind and meditating, but you're looking for something that will help you get centered and focused and feel calm and collected, and if you're coming out of a stressful meeting or you just want to approach whatever situation you're going in with a clear head, then the physiologic sigh is a great way for you to do that. It's really simple. You can do this just sitting in any position. You could do it in the car before you walk into the house or before you walk into the office at a red light if you want to. I don't recommend doing it While you're driving, for safety reasons, but you probably could. And what you're going to do is you're going to take a full exhalation. So you're just going to let the air all the way out. We call that a cleansing breath. And then breathe in through your nose, filling in your belly, filling in your lungs. And then you might take a few extra sips of air at the very top with your mouth. And you're going to hold that at the top. I like to add a pelvic squeeze. So just bringing both of your diaphragms together, so your pelvic floor is like a diaphragm. And then you have your diaphragm, of course, in your abdomen or just above your abdomen. And we're just going to hold that. And then on the count of three, we're going to let it out with a audible exhale. 1, 2, 3. Letting it all the way out. So sighing audibly, just like you would if you had an immense sense of relief, doing this for, you know, three to five times, maybe even up to three to five minutes, depending on how stressed out you're feeling, can be a powerful way to shift you from sympathetic dominance into a more parasympathetic state. Now, other breathing techniques that I really like. One is called Bellows breath, also known as Bakshika breath. Bellows breath is generally not recommended for people who have uncontrolled hypertension because it will rapidly raise your adrenaline and blood pressure. So this breathing technique, if you've ever been to Tony Robbins seminars, he uses this breathing technique to kind of warm up the crowd and get everyone amped up. You'll notice that Tony uses the breath to change the state of his audience. So this one is really simple. You're gonna start with your hands at your side. You're gonna take a sharp inhalation as you push your arms up towards the ceiling rapidly. And you're going to rapidly exhale through the nose or the mouth as you bring your arms down. And you would do this 30 times so it would look and sound like this. And you do that 30 times. You would. You make sure you're seated. Sometimes people get lightheaded when they do this. And this is also known as yogic coffee. So it's a way to feel more energized. So if you don't, if you're trying to transition away from caffeine as a stimulant, especially in the afternoons, this breathing technique is very powerful. So 30 repetitions, you want to rest for about 15 to 30 seconds. Repeat it two more times after that. And so you're doing three rounds, 30 repetitions each, with about 15 to 30 seconds in between. And you're going to feel amazing energy. If you were to take your resting heart rate before and after, you would see that it's going to pop up nicely. And this could be a great way to energize yourself without having to have any coffee or any, any stimulants, especially in the evening if you need a little pick me up or in the afternoon. This is a great breathing technique. Now, the other breathing technique is something that you're probably, hopefully doing occasionally without even realizing it, is humming. Humming is a very powerful tool to actually increase nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, as for sure, Aaron, you know this. But nitric oxide is a very potent molecule. It's. And it has many different functions. One of them is to dilate your blood vessels, so it helps increase circulation, especially into the microvasculature. Some of you may or may not know this, but Viagra helps increase nitric oxide levels, helps recycle your own nitric oxide levels. And Viagra was initially developed as a blood pressure medication, but it had other, more beneficial side effects, I guess, for men at least. And Viagar is also used during COVID because nitric oxide kills viruses and bacteria on contact. In fact, assuming you're breathing correctly through your nose a majority of the time, the type of bacteria, the oral bacteria in your mouth is going to help you make nitric oxide in your nasal mucosa. So your immune defenses actually start in your nose. Remember, you breathe in 30 pounds of air each day. The purpose of your nose is to slow down the air that's coming into your lungs and filter the air, perfect the air, and remove any pathogens from the air. So our nasal mucosa is lined with nitric oxide to help us do that. So it serves as our immune defense mechanism. And then nitric oxide, in addition to helping increase circulation, also helps to lower blood pressure. So there's many benefits. And something as simple as breathing through your nose increases nitric oxide six fold. Humming increases it 15 fold. So you get a substantial increase in your own natural defense mechanisms and the ability to lower your blood pressure. And it's hard to be mad when you're humming. So I feel like it just naturally changes your mood. And anything that we do that increases the length of our exhale. So humming increases the length of how long you're breathing out for is going to shift us into a more parasympathetic State. So it's a great way to kind of shift our state, you know, enhance our immune defense mechanisms, and also to just kind of feel good.

Those are actually four great, great ideas. And when we will be turning this into a podcast, I mean, sorry, into a blog eventually. And these will be in there. So that'll be a super helpful thing. 2 quick 1 comment Share One more absolute, please. Yeah, yeah.

So this one is developed by Andrew Wild. And I don't know how you give credit for these things, because anyone can just make these up. But, you know, he calls it the 4, 7, 8 breathing technique. I also like to. I have my own version of it called the parachute technique. And this is great for when you're trying to go to sleep. So we've kind of given you things to feel calm, feel energized, and I want to give you a breathing technique to help wind you down. So the 4, 7, 8 is really simple. It. It's breathing in for a count of four, holding for a count of seven, and then exhaling for a count of eight. What you'll notice is that the, you know, the rest. The inhale is about 4 seconds, and the total exhale time is about 15 seconds. So again, we're kind of shifting more into a parasympathetic state. If you want a visual. What I like to visualize is taking a breath in. So imagine when you were young, in kindergarten or grade one, you did that parachute game, and you would have a parachute. You'd all sit in a circle, and you'd wave the parachute, and you throw it up in the air. It takes about 4 seconds for it to get to the top, and then it just holds still at the very top. And then you would slowly imagine as a parachute's coming down. You're exhaling, emptying your lungs, and just kind of melting into your bed. And then you would just repeat that pattern. So it works out to about 4 in and about 12 to 14 seconds out. But the visualization is the parachute, and I think that takes us all back to, like, a happy place in our life. And the visualization of kind of melting into the bed like a candle. So use those breathing techniques to energize you, to help you feel focused and calm, and then at night, to help you sleep well. And then at night, if you're not already doing this, I also suggest mouth taping. About two thirds of Americans and Canadians, and I'm sure people all over the world sleep with their mouth open. And it's one of the most detrimental things to Your recovery, your oral health. And it's such a simple, easy intervention. Just placing a piece of tape vertically on your mouth like this. You can still breathe through your mouth if you need to or want to. You can still talk if you need to. You don't have to seal your mouth like you see some people doing. It's just to keep your jaw relaxed and your mouth closed to ensure that you're breathing through your nose throughout the night. And I think of that as a.

Form of breath work.

That's probably the easiest breath work that we can do because we don't even have to think about it. We just have to put the tape on.

Actually, I've done. Now the caveat to that, it's not FDA approved, blah, blah, blah. Having said that, you know, I've actually had patients with severe sleep apnea on CPAP machines wanting to get off of it and against medical advice. Cause I did this on their own. They actually mouth taped, swore by it. I retested them and actually their sleep apnea had resolved with a mouth taping. So it can be pretty profound, actually. It's pretty, pretty, pretty cool hack, so to speak. But my pulmonology friends, you know, one of them actually had someone inhale tape. So he's got to make sure you get the right kind of tape and do it. Right, Right. Because, you know, it's not just, you know, scotch tape. Right. So. Because, Right.

So there's always that one.

There's all. There always is somebody. Yeah. So, but one thing, the comment you made about your wife earlier on the fascia, you know, if I'd heard that story 15 years ago, I would have rolled my eyes and been like, okay, like this is another one of the. Okay, whatever. I was at a conference, super high level hypermobility POTS conference, and one of the content topics was fascia and people with chronic health issues. And this one lecturer was a urogynecologist, so she specialized in women with pelvic floor issues. And she was showing diagrams of the human fascia. And as a pelvic floor specialist, she took in and she actually showed this really cool anatomical picture of a female and showed the fascia from the soles of the feet going up your abductors into your pelvic plane, up the spinal cord. And it actually showed the connection between your feet and your brain. And she was talking about how when people, when women particularly have children, and it messes that whole thing up. And so parapel, floor therapy, et cetera, et cetera. But the point is like everything's connected and something that sounds kind of weird, strange, you know, ah, you cut a tongue tie can have profound impacts. And really high level medicine is actually looking at this stuff now at high level courses. So I think one of the things I've learned In the last 15 years, if something sounds a little off, kind of put it there because I might, I might be actually preaching it a couple years later, you know.

You know what's really interesting about tongue ties, if I may just kind of mention this, is that there are pretty significant consequences of a tongue tie. So one is that there's a magic button in the roof of our mouth and basically there's a significant amount of nerve endings just behind the front of your teeth. And so for people who are able to place their tongue there, we probably take it for granted because when you place your tongue in that position, it instantly soothes you. So you ever notice a child, they'll put their thumb in the roof of their mouth because that helps soothe them. You take their thumb out of their mouth, they instantly start wailing, put it back in, they instantly stop crying. Some people will use a pacifier, right. Again, it hits the same spot. The mother's nipple, if they're breastfeeding, hits that same spot and instantly soothes them. So there is that self soothing mechanism that takes place when we're able to place our tongue there. The other thing that happens when our tongue is placed in the roof of our mouth is it acts as a spacer. So without the tongue in the roof of the mouth, the face caves inwards because there's nothing stopping the face from doing. That kind of gravity pulls everything inwards and down, so to speak. And so when our tongue is placed there, it expands the hard palate naturally. And the bottom of our sinuses is the top of our mouth. So when we have a narrow airway because we're placing our tongue in the bottom of our mouth instead of our roof of our mouth, placing our tongue there will actually open up the airway and make us able to breathe through our nose more efficiently and effectively. What happens if our, if we don't do that? We end up getting overcrowding. So our dental arch doesn't form correctly. We end up. Children end up getting overcrowding, which means they get teeth removed is the most common procedure that takes place. And it's not because they have too many teeth, it's because they don't have enough jaw or, you know, their face and dental arch isn't big enough. So that's a huge thing that Often gets overlooked. And by removing the teeth, it doesn't actually solve the problem. So these children end up continuing to be habitual mouth breathers. They then develop tonsillitis or adenoiditis. They get the tonsils removed, and that affects the drainage pathways in the brain and lymphatic system. So there's just this downward spiral that takes place. And for people that don't know this, the number one cause of cavities is actually mouth breathing. So these children that are thumb suckers, their placement of the thumb actually pushes their upper palate upwards, creating an even smaller airway. So now they have narrow face, an airway that's been pushed upwards, and then it's difficult for them to breathe through their nose. So they're habitual mouth breathers. If you're a habitual mouth breather, you end up being more prone to anxiety. You have more cavities, you have more gum issues and inflammation in the mouth. And you also are polluting your lungs with every breath that you take. Right. Your nose perfects the air that goes into your lungs versus your mouth is the dirtiest part of your body. It adds, you know, unnecessary bacteria and immune stress to the lung microbiome. So there's, like, some pretty significant consequences of how we breathe and that the downward spiral can be identified or the can be prevented if we pay attention to how our children breathe, especially when they're very young.

And there's actually certain African cultures that figure that out, however many millennia ago. And actually the moms will act when the babies are sleeping, touch the baby's mouth, and they'll train the children to breathe through their nose when they're. When they're infants, and they keep that habit in adulthood. And Weston A. Price, which was a dentist who traveled the world back in the 1930s and 40s, et cetera, one of the things he noticed was a correlation with palate size, dental cavities, and systemic health. And so individuals who had broad palates, less cavities love less health issues. And so it's really interesting how the oral, you know, dental stuff, this is what, you know, functional dentists or biologic dentists do. They focus on mouth health. But it's just interesting how much breathing is a part actually of shaping your face, which is one of the things I do in my clinical practice. I can look at people's face structures until, you know, based on the size of the jaw, Is the jaw set back or forward looking in their mouth? Looking for these things called tori, which are these little bumpy things like I can tell if someone's probably got significant sleep apnea, which plays into a whole bunch of other things. So it's really kind of interesting how how we breathe, how we interact with the air around us is super impactful for our overall health. It's. It's a bigger deal than we think it is.

Yeah, the, you know, it's so powerful because of how often we breathe. Right. And when you think about it, like, what shaves down mountains is air, right? So, like, in Ontario, where I live, we used to have mountains that were taller than the Himalayas. And now you. If you were to drive through Ontario, you would never know that. And in combination with the glaciers and the persistent wind, it's what shaves everything down. So over time, the wind always, always wins. And so the air that's going in and out is, you know, in our tongue, pace plan, and all these things are significantly shaping our health in ways that we wouldn't realize. Right. It's invisible. So we don't give it much thought. We're all doing it, otherwise we wouldn't be alive right now. So you don't give it much thought. But that's where the opportunity lies, right? If you could breathe, you know, you know, just. Just by breathing through your nose versus your mouth. Just that one thing. If you learn nothing from this conversation, I hope you learned a lot of things. But if you learn nothing from this conversation, just bring your attention to. Am I breathing through my mouth? Am I breathing through your nose or my nose? And if you're breathing through your mouth, sometimes that's appropriate. If you're sprinting, that's appropriate. If you're exerting yourself, that's appropriate. If you're talking, then that's appropriate. But if you're just sitting there checking email, that's not appropriate. If you're sleeping, it's not appropriate. If you're watching a movie, it's not appropriate. We should be breathing through our nose 95 to 99% of the time. And there are times where you want to be breathing through your mouth and that's appropriate, but for the most part, that's one thing that if you did that, your entire life would change. And I promise you that. And I know, you know, even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, Aaron, if you told me this and I told you this, we'd be like, oh, get out of here. There's like, so many other things that we could do. Yes, there are other things that you can do, but stack them on top of how you're breathing, because it's free, it's immediate, it's measurable. There's literally thousands of articles that have been published on this. And once you see it in the way, I hope I've convinced you enough that this is important, you start to realize how it affects so many different systems in your body. Asides from just keeping you alive, it helps you thrive.

Yeah. And how I'd like to end this conversation today, this is all like amazing information is on a resource, something you recorded that I use with my patients. I think at one point in time you referred to it as psychedelic breathing. Maybe. I don't know if I'm quoting it is that.

Yeah, I probably did. I call it breakthrough breath work now.

Breakthrough breathwork, breakthrough category, breakthrough. But I was actually turned on to this with one of our mastermind groups. We were together and just in the group of executive high level, you know, healthcare people. And to see people do breath work for an hour and at the end of it, people crying and then people sharing their. What they experienced with it. And I started using with patients actually with, you know, one of the things I'll see with people's health is they get stuck. I work on diet, I work on exercise, I work on stress and sleep. And they get. Their healing process gets stuck. I've seen a lot of these people that trauma as a part of the body, the brain doesn't let their body heal. And so I started using this breath work, this that you actually shared with the group and seeing people actually have significant stress responses. And a couple of my patients who actually are trauma therapists have actually used start using it with their patients and seeing profound changes. So I'm gonna probably attach it wherever this is. But could you like just walk us through briefly like what that is, what your thinking is? Because the first time I did it, I kind of was like, this is kind of, you know, this is kind of weird. And my wife says I have some trauma. I'm not sure. I mean, I got super relaxed when I did it. But just to be in the room and people share their experiences and hear people sobbing in a room, you know, it's pretty profound. So could you like walk us through and I'm going to share it wherever this is put. But like what that is and like.

Yeah, absolutely. So one thing I want people to know that really hits home for a lot of people is that our diaphragm is where we store a lot of our trauma. The diaphragm is the conduit for the fascial system. So our fascial system is like a web like structure that connects every cell, tissue, and organ in your body together simultaneously in a hydrostatic fashion. So anytime there's a blunt force that we experience, that force gets distributed throughout this entire network, kind of like a spider web. So if you pluck a spider web, the whole web knows that, exactly where that plucking took place, and that force is evenly distributed. The conduit for that system is the diaphragm. And that makes sense because if you're. If someone was going to punch you, what's the first thing you do? You hold your breath, right? So the diaphragm can receive the blow and then redistribute that force, that energy that has to go everywhere. So the diaphragm is where we store a lot of our trauma. Many people hold in crying, right? You can't cry unless, you know, unless your diaphragm is ready to move. Many children are told to stop crying, and you can't stop crying until you stop breathing first. And the way to stop breathing is to hold your diaphragm. So over time, our diaphragm takes on a lot of this traumatic experience. The other thing to note is that in Chinese medicine is where the lungs is where we store grief. So it's not uncommon for people who are grieving to have issues with their breath and also even develop diseases of the lungs because they're holding on to grief. And this is why breath work can be so powerful in releasing these emotions. So when we go through rigorous breathing practices like you go through in this journey, and you just meet yourself where you're at. So it's not about. It's as hard as you want to make it, and it's as challenging as you want to make it. And you're always in control. But it's a series of different movements and different breathing cadences that we go through. So we start off first by setting an intention into the journey. You know, what is it that you're trying to resolve? It could be anything. It doesn't have to be trauma. It could be, you feel amazing, but maybe you're approaching an important business decision, or maybe you just want to get creative and solve a problem that you're facing. It doesn't have to be trauma. It could be anything that you want to set the intention for. Next is we shake. So we start off by shaking our bodies, tapping our bodies, kind of waking up that fascial system and, you know, just stirring the pot up a little bit, so to speak, removing that old energy that we're holding onto. And then you lay down and you go into a series of different breathing cadences. It's all set to beautiful music. So we start off by what's called earth breath, then ocean breath and air and then fire, where you're breathing as fast as you can. And then we do a few breath holds where you would take a deep inhale and full exhale. And then we go through several rounds of that. And then at the end I take you through a guided meditation where we go through a forgiveness practice and we kind of heal you and every version of you and then bring you back to the present moment. And after that we encourage you to have some sort of integration. So if you are going to do this breath work, I encourage you to do it with at least one person. You could do it on your own, but it's always nice to have a conversation with somebody afterwards so that you can discuss what came up. Or if you're going to see your practitioner or your therapist, you know, you can bring that conversation up there. And it's always good to have a journal handy to write down whatever came up for you. So it's an opportunity to write a new story. It's an opportunity to resolve some old trauma, bring it to the surface and release it and let it go. And it's an opportunity to open the door inwards and kind of go on a self reflective journey as well. So it'll give you exactly what you need whenever you need it is the experience that I found using it.

Yeah. It's kind of interesting because I'm thinking about a couple of my patients who have significant trauma and when I talk to them about it, every time they do this, they have a different memory and some of them are remembering things they didn't, they've forgotten. It's almost like what memory, what experience, what are you ready to get rid of right now? And that's what comes through and they don't and they move on. So it's really kind of interesting to see how it's almost like a cleansing process.

Yeah. And it, it may not even be what you think it is going to be. Right. So just accept it for what it is. And, and it's like peeling an onion. Right. There might be several layers to which you have to get to, to get to the center and you might have to do it several times to really find the answer you're looking for. But it's quite amazing. And I'm not saying it because I facilitate it. My mentor, Giovanni Bartolomeo taught it to me and I had my own experience, profound experience. I went back to my first breath and was able to re witness that which was pretty amazing because we don't really remember from that time in our lives. But if we can get quiet enough, those memories are all there. Even past life memories are all there if we can access them. And the breath is a way for us to do that. So for me, it created some amazing shifts in my health and in my self awareness. And so I became trained as a facilitator and I'm very blessed to be able to work with a lot of practitioners and belong in similar communities as you and facilitated for entrepreneurs and people who are looking to make a big difference in the world. And I'm always grateful for when they share it. So thank you for helping spread the message and, you know, putting it in front of your audience as well.

Cool. Well, I don't want to hold up too much your time, Sachin. We're getting close to an hour talking. I looked up and like, wow, it's almost an hour just flying by. If people want to learn more about you, like where can they go learn about you? What, what are you doing now? What are you doing next? Why don't you just give us your lowdown real quickly?

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. So they can find me on Facebook, the Sachin Patel on Instagram and Satchin Patel DC on Facebook. That's kind of where I share, you know, all kinds of different health tips and tools and strategies if they want more information on breathing. I've created a whole bunch of free resources and tools. You can go to breathworkwithsachin.com and in there you'll find everything's free. It's my gift to humanity. You'll find access to the recording, But I'm sure Dr. Aaron will link it below. You'll also find my notes from James Nestor's retreat. You'll find keynotes on breathing. You'll find my favorite breathing tools. Like, there's a lot of. We just kind of scratch the surface of the surface today. So there's, you know, different breathing wearables and different tools that you can use. There's different gums that you can chew to strengthen your jaw and widen your palate. So like I, I share all of those things and everything I'm learning, I'm still learning. So I'm, I'm still a student, forever a student myself. So when I learn something new, I share it in there. So there's a series of emails that you'll get. Each one has a tool, and one of those tools is called Breathe like this, not that. So it shows you how to breathe in different scenarios as well, and different breathing techniques. So if you want to sleep faster, if you want more energy, we cover some of those things today. But there's other breathing techniques for different scenarios that I discuss in that guide, so you can access all of that for free at breathworkwithsachin. Com.

Thank you so much for that. Sounds great. I actually use Breathwork to help myself fall asleep at night. So I'm curious now what you're doing with that thing. So thank you so much for your time. This was a great conversation. Hope this information is helpful about there. Please like Follow Subscribe Shows. This is how we get information like this out there. And until next time, take care. We'll talk to you soon.